The Concept of Law

HLA Hart
Leslie Green, Edited by Joseph Raz, and Penelope A. Bulloch

Features an introduction by Leslie Green, clarifying misunderstandings of Hart's project and setting the work in the context of modern social and political theory

Includes updated notes and references, allowing students to follow developments in subsequent literature

Retains the pagination of the second edition, allowing references to be followed

Includes Hart's Postscript from the Second Edition

The Concept of Law

Third Edition

HLA Hart
Leslie Green, Edited by Joseph Raz, and Penelope A. Bulloch

Description

Fifty years on from its original publication, HLA Hart's The Concept of Law is widely recognized as the most important work of legal philosophy published in the twentieth century. It is a classic book in the field of legal scholarship and remains the starting point for most students coming to the subject for the first time.

Known as Hart's most famous work, The Concept of Law emerged from a set of lectures that Hart began to deliver in 1952 in which he developed a sophisticated view of legal positivism. Hart revolutionized the methods of jurisprudence and the philosophy of law in the English-speaking world by bringing the tools of analytic, and especially linguistic, philosophy to bear on the central problems of legal theory.

In this third
edition, Leslie Green provides a new introduction that sets the book in the context of subsequent developments in social and political philosophy, clarifying misunderstandings of Hart's project and highlighting central tensions and problems in the work. The Concept of Law remains a must-read for anyone interested in the great thinkers of the 20th century.

The Concept of Law

Third Edition

HLA Hart
Leslie Green, Edited by Joseph Raz, and Penelope A. Bulloch

Table of Contents

Introduction, Leslie Green1. Persistent Questions2. Laws, Commands, and Orders3. The Variety of Laws4. Sovereign and Subject5. Law as the Union of Primary and Secondary Rules6. The Foundations of a Legal System7. Formalism and Rule-Scepticism8. Justice and Morality9. Laws and Morals10. International LawPostscript, Edited by Penelope A. Bulloch and Joseph Raz

The Concept of Law

Third Edition

HLA Hart
Leslie Green, Edited by Joseph Raz, and Penelope A. Bulloch

Author Information

HLA Hart was Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University and the Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford. He authored The Concept of Law one of the seminal works of English-language jurisprudence. He passed away in 1992.

Leslie Green is Professor of the Philosophy of Law and Pauline and Max Gordon Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He is the author The Authority of the State (Clarendon Press, 1990), and is the co-editor of Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Law (with Brian Leiter).

Joseph Raz has been teaching at Oxford University since 1972. He has been Professor of the Philosophy of Law there since 1985, and Research Professor since 2006; he has also been Professor at Columbia University since 2002. He is a Fellow of the British Academy
and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has published a number of books including Between Authority and Interpretation (OUP, 2009) and The Authority of Law (OUP, 2009).